Posts Tagged Digital billboards
12,105 acts of protest against captive-audience media
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity on April 5th, 2010
12 months, 12,000 views
We at Media by Choice have been unable to post in a while but we wanted to take a minute to recognize a milestone for our effort to raise awareness of what’s wrong with captive-audience media (TV and other audio and video media in places where we can’t escape it).
We launched the Media by Choice blog almost a year ago (April 19, 2009) and today, 88 posts later, we’ve attracted 12,105 views, or about 1,000 views a month, or 136 views per post on average.
We like to think of each view as an act of protest against captive-audience media. Of course, we know it’s not really like that. But one thing is clear: word is getting out. We now have other blogs linking to ours and, what’s more, people are finding the site through their searches. That tells us we’re attracting the readers we set out to attract.
And our book, Noise Wars: Compulsory Media and Our Loss of Autonomy
Our posts on boom car noise continue to be the most heavily viewed. The most popular post of all time, with 2,665 views, is On noise, a judge who gets it, about a judge who threw the book at some men who retaliated against their neighbor for complaining about pumping their bass-heavy stereo all night. That post even generated back-and-forth commentary on Reddit, which we take as validation that the post struck a nerve.
Of more recent posts, a short piece we did on a Virginia Tech researcher who back-tracked and admitted that “TV on a stick” (billboards with TV) needs to be regulated before it becomes ubiquitous, attracted a lot of viewers. And it’s a personal favorite, too, because it captures the essence of how captive-audience media interests operate. First, they say we love their force-fed content and then they roll out research to support that. As we’ve said from the very beginning, getting surveys to support your point of view isn’t rocket science. Anyone can construct a survey instrument and set parameters on your universe of respondents to achieve the outcome you want.
In the Virginia Tech case, the researcher all but admitted that this is what happened. First, she was paid to develop research showing TV billboards are no more distracting than any other type of roadside media. She did that, but her research was rejected by the Transportation Research Board, a congressionally chartered research agency. Then she told the New York Times that she personally believes that TV billboards do cause more distraction and pose a safety hazard than conventional billboards. To us, this simply shows what we’ve contended all along, that when it comes to the research the captive-audience media touts, the emperor has no clothes. Put another way, digital out-of-home (DOOH) media are forcing highly distracting content down our throats, exploiting our involuntary attention, and holding up research they they design and commission to give them a fig leaf of validity to hide behind. Speaking for ourselves, we don’t buy it.
There’s simply no place for captive-audience media in our world. We live in a noisy, busy place and we need to be able to pick and choose when to consume audio-video media. It’s too distracting to have it forced on us. Although many people think this is a non-issue and that we ought to devote our time to ending hunger around the world, the fact is, as audio-video media continue to fill our public spaces, more people won’t find this a non-issue any longer; they will see it for what it is, the vehicle for a few people to commandeer our eyes and ears for their purposes, taking advantage of us when we can’t escape it.
DOOH Researcher: Digital Billboards Need Regulation
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity on March 3rd, 2010
The captive-audience media industry in 2007 paid researchers at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to look at digital billboards—what some people call television on a stick—and found, unsurprisingly, that the billboards don’t pose a distracted-driver problem beyond that of any other type of billboard.
Critics of the billboards say the research was flawed and point to its rejection for publication by the Transportation Research Board, the congressionally chartered agency.
While the debate over the quality of the research will surely go on, what’s clear is that even the lead researcher on the project says regulation is needed for billboards that use flashing lights and quick movement to attract people’s attention.
“If we don’t . . . get on top of this right now while the capabilities are expanding, every roadway will be filled with flashing lights and video,” says the researcher, Suzanne Lee.
Lee is quoted in the March 3 New York Times in a major feature on the controversy over digital billboards, what we on this blog call captive-audience media.
We at Media by Choice have to pause and savor the irony: the Digital out-of-home (DOOH) media industry paid Lee to conduct her research and she did what she was paid to do: find that digital billboards are no more distracting than regular billboards. But now the researcher is telling journalists that, despite what her industry-paid research says, she believes the billboards do in fact up the distraction level.
From our point of view, there’s no mystery to this. Digital billboards exploit what scientists call our involuntary attention. Like TVs in places where we have no choice but to watch them—like in elevators or on buses—digital billboards use our involuntary attention not to protect us against big cats slinking through tall grass on the Serengeti but to hit us with audio-video content that no one has asked for yet isn’t allowed to escape.
Given the massive investment in money and other resources by media and other companies into captive-audience media, the growth of high-distraction platforms like digital billboards is like a big ship that simply can’t turn back. But as the researcher Suzanne Lee says, the time to look at and understand the impact this media has on us is now—while we’re still on the front end of this growth curb. What we mustn’t do is wait until so many tens of billions of dollars have been invested that no one is willing to say that this juggernaut of inescapable media has no clothes.
Free speech, yes; digital signs, no
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity, Media noise on August 1st, 2009
Is it a violation of free speech rights to prohibit a billboard company from erecting a bunch of digital signs in a city? Lamar Advertising, the big outdoor ad company, says yes. Havelock, N.C., says no.
It doesn’t look like the First Amendment question will get answered because a July 30 news report on the billboard controversy says the two sides are trying to work out an agreement.
Lamar has bludgeoned municipalities with the First Amendment argument at least two times previously, in Los Angeles and Salem, Ore. We say “bludgeoned” because it’s not clear prohibiting billboards is a First Amendment violation. The U.S. Supreme Court has made clear restrictions on certain media to protect citizens against intrusions into their rights are consistent with the Constitution.
Exhibit A is a 1948 case, Kovacs vs. Cooper, we’ve talked about before in this blog. Trenton, N.J., enacted an ordinance prohibiting the broadcasting of “loud and raucous” messages from sound trucks. The Supreme Court upheld the city’s right to enforce its prohibition on the ground that the audio trucks violate residents’ right to privacy. Since residents aren’t given a chance to decide whether or not they want to consume the content, the audio trucks constitute a form of coercion, a violation of their privacy.
“The unwilling listener is not like the passer-by who may be offered a pamphlet in the street but cannot be made to take it,” the Court said in its ruling. “In his home or on the street, he is practically helpless to escape this interference with his privacy by loudspeakers except through the protection of the municipality.”
Digital signs are cut from the same cloth as sound trucks, even though the former involve video and the latter, audio. With their flashing light and incessant movement video images are virtually impossible to ignore and giant video images, which are what digital billboards serve up, constitute visual noise of the most brazen, coercive kind.
When we were researching Noise Wars: Compulsory Media and Our Loss of Autonomy, a book just released from Algora Publishing in New York City, we looked into battles in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., over the introduction of giant digital screens in neighborhoods where residents complained about the flashing light and constant screen movement. The environment had become so polluted with visual noise that they couldn’t sleep in their own homes.
In any case, what Kovacs vs. Cooper tells us is that certain media can be restricted without violating the First Amendment, and that some restrictions are necessary to keep our world from collapsing into an uninhabitable circus environment, although they don’t quite use that terminology.
From a free-speech standpoint, it would be hard to find anyone more diehard about protecting that right than us. We believe everyone, including billboard companies, should be able to communicate what they want, even if people find the message offensive or outrageous. But that’s not the same thing as the freedom to turn people into a captive audience; people need to be free not to consume the message. The key is choice. And giant digital signs, which commandeer public space for a private purpose, are the antithesis of choice.
First-ever exclusive look at captive-audience media, from Algora Publishing
Bio-mechanical display eases billboard intrusiveness
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity, Media noise on June 6th, 2009
For critics of captive-audience media, the last several years have been all bad news all the time. Out-of-home video platforms and other types of “push” media that force themselves onto people indiscriminately have been enjoying such explosive growth that the recession has been little more than a footnote on the annual reports of captive-audience media companies.
But in a sign that media executives are starting to recognize that not everyone appreciates being made captive to unwanted media, companies in the audience-captivity space are throwing some business to a digital signage company called Magink that offers a low-intrusive display technology.
The company renders its digital images bio-mechanically by using electricity to manipulate an organic display coating. The result is a digital billboard that’s less intrusive than the standard LED billboard because the images are rendered in this organic compound rather than light.
Admittedly, this is a thin reed on which to hang the banner of good news, but in adopting the new technology, media executives and civic leaders are at least starting to incorporate captive-audience critics’ concern into their vocabulary.
In a news brief in a digital media trade publication, a local official praised the digital signage because it’s less intrusive than what would ordinarily be used. “[I]t emits no light to disrupt the community,” says Ruben Diaz, Jr., president of the Bronx borough, the municipality in which one of the company’s billboards is located.
For an industry whose whole reason for being is to get in front of people as intrusively as possible, adopting a low-intrusive technology is a huge concession. Of course, it no doubt doesn’t hurt that the new technology is also energy efficient, so media companies get a triple bang for their buck: fewer complaints from residents who are outraged that their neighborhood is being invaded by giant digital signs outside their homes, far lower electricity bills, and the opportunity to tout their “green” credentials.
But, speaking as critics of audience captivity, we’ll take what we can get. It’s a victory that residents’ concern about intrusion is even making its way onto the pages of the digital media trade press.
L.A. digital billboard battle is taste of future
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity on May 12th, 2009
A battle going on in Los Angeles over giant digital billboards is exactly the kind of conflict we’ll be seeing in cities across the country as captive-audience media digs deeper into our common space.
The digital billboards are in effect giant TVs that play commercials, but it’s not the content of the billboards that has most people upset; it’s the intrusive nature of the medium. The giant screens are invasive and distracting.
Under a proposed law change that’s before the city council, existing digital billboards can stay up but the introduction of new billboards would be limited to 21 zones.
This isn’t the first time the city has wrestled with this issue, and indeed, it was the unsatisfactory nature of the last law that was passed that forced the city’s hand to revisit their outdoor display policies.
In the earlier go-round, the city took a compromise position, allowing advertising companies to erect up to 800 digital boards. Advertising interests were unhappy and claimed the restriction violated their constitutional rights, and community interests were unhappy because advertisers were given the go-ahead to put up what amnounts to 800 giant TVs.
The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the issue of captive-audience media in the early 1950s, in a case called Public Utilities Commission of the District of Columbia et al. v. Pollak et al, and found in favor of the captors rather than the captives, although with some notable dissension.
But the Supreme Court only looked at a single instance of captivity; it never considered the question of captivity in a context in which such captivity is ubiquitous throughout our environment. It’s one thing to allow a polluter to get away with throwing a dirty sock into a pristine stream; it’s another when the polluter is dumping toxins into the stream by the gallon.
In Los Angeles, as the two sides work out their differences, people involved are talking about restricting billboards by content. That is, the billboards would be allowed if their content matches the character of the neighborhood.
This notion of analyzing content is exactly wrong and not just because matters of content are too slippery for two sides to ever come to agreement. There is only one issue in this debate, and it’s over the medium, not the content.
It is clearly time for the Supreme Court to revisit this issue; the penetration of captive-audience media is widespread and on the cusp of explosive growth. It will be a very different environment tomorrow than it was in 1952.
